Wednesday, November 28, 2007

NEWS: Hired Gun Interview

Hired Gun is one of the MCs performing at Stand Up! co-curated by OhWord & SitDownStandUp.com, hosted by theiCs and also featuring Cause, Donny Goines, NYOIL and a surprise guest (buy $9 tix here). R.H.S. over at OhWord interviewed him. Excerpts below, read the full interview including downloads here.

OhWord: Where exactly are you from? Do they have running water yet? Where are you currently located? What got you into emceeing, besides a lack of cow-tipping talent?Hired Gun: I originate from Hopatcong, New Jersey, a small rural northwest town near the Pennsylvania border, but have been a Brooklyn resident since 2000. I credit my older cousin who was from Newark, home of Redman, Queen Latifah and Naughty By Nature [Editors’s Note: those guys are mostly from Irvington, let’s be real], for exposing me to hip hop. Where I grew up it was the land of Hall and Oates, Hair Bands, and southern rock. I spent a lot of time in the summer and on weekends though hanging out with him at my Grandmother’s who lived in Hillside (an area around Newark). Listening to 98,7 Kiss with Red Alert and Chuck Chillout, and WBLS with Marley Marl in the late eighties really hooked me on hip hop. The emceeing became a natural progression from hearing the music and following my cousin as he had grown up rhyming and battling kids in his school. I looked up to him, and identified more with Guru and Q-Tip then I ever really could with Bon Jovi or Eddie Van Halen. So my classmates picked up guitars to follow their heroes…I grabbed a mic to follow mine. Full interview here.

tempus neminem non manet / a throne is only a bench
covered with velvet / With hip-hop guidelines I state I never liked authority When sales control stats I place no faith in the majority / Inhale deep like the words of my breath I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death / The skies over your head 'aint safe no more And hip-hop ain't your home And if it is, then you fuckin' up the crib, son /